Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

In college, if I was in the room, my politics killed the vibe. I wasn’t down with anyone who wasn’t profoundly conscious of the socio-economic issues that impacted the global community, who wasn’t discussing the historic wrongs against oppressed people everywhere. Anyone that smiled or laughed too easily was circumspect.

I listened to Bob Marley. I read Fanon. I romanticized the 1960s. I was ready to lend my voice to any struggle that came along, even at the expense of my grades. I joined organizations on campus that addressed important issues. I was thrilled to debate, and to organize. Frequently, I spoke out against police brutality, apartheid in South Africa, and the imprisonment of Mumia Abu-Jamal. My parents wanted to know what happened to their taciturn son.

One evening, I saw a poster at a train stop in West Philadelphia, announcing a meeting that very night on UPenn’s campus. When I walked in, the dozen or so people in a circle ceased talking and glared my way.

Can we help you?
Yes, I am here for the meeting.
Oh, sorry. We are a whites-only student group fighting for the liberation of black people.

I turned around, confused, thinking I was in a Ralph Ellison novel. That moment changed my outlook. I saw the humor in the satirical situation of not being welcomed at a meeting that was meant to address the historic exclusion of black people. I laughed and have since kept a light attitude alongside my committed sense of righteous indignation.

Everyday, people around the world are living through astonishing crises, both multi-generational and personal, vast and siloed. Today’s poem speaks to the all-encompassing and leveling despair we carry when we are survivors, or the descendants of survivors.

Via Politica
by Luljeta Lleshanaku, translated by Ani Gjika

I grew up in a big house
where weakness and expressions of joy
deserved punishment.
And I was raised on the via politica
with the grease of yesterday’s glories,
a thick grease collected under arctic skies.
I was lit up. My notebooks, my hair, my heart reeked of
smoke.

That’s when we saw each other clearly.
Or rather, what remained of us.
Damaged like lottery numbers
scratched away with a blade.

How different we were!

Those with round faces were righteous;
those with narrow faces were cautious.

One listened secretly to Puccini,
another to silence, the music’s music.
The oldest one declaimed monologues
inside a ten-by-ten-foot cell
he had built for himself.

And the mysterious one
simply had diabetes.

But how similar we were in severe circumstances!

Alarmed like a flock of magpies
that the smallest stone sends into the sky
toward the mouth of the abyss.

Then it became obvious there wasn’t enough space for everyone.
We separated. Some went on living in via verbum,
telling of what they knew, what they witnessed,
and so, through their narrative,
creating their own grease.

The others crossed over the ocean.

And those in particular who went farthest away 
never speak of their annoying history
of wretched survival, burying it
in the darkest crevices on their being.
Unfortunately, as with perfume, its scent
lingers there for much, much longer.

“Via Politica” by Luljeta Lleshanaku, translated by Ani Gjika, from NEGATIVE SPACE, © 2018 Ani Gjika. Used by permission of New Directions Press.